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Process after OCS

cBoehme

Pro Rec SWO July 2012
Hi everybody,

I have a question about the different paths that SWOs go through from right before OCS graduation to working and reporting to their assigned ship. The application process and the routine at OCS are both clear to me, but I have not heard much about the process after graduation till you are on your first duty sip. Where does SWOS fit into that process? Is there time to visit family and get my family settled in before I begin working?

Thanks everyone for your help with this.
 

PenguinGal

Can Do!
Contributor
Howdy! I'm not a SWO but my husband is. Unfortunately, I can't tell you about time between OCS and meeting the fleet as he went through NROTC, but I can tell you that you will go to SWOS after you are on your ship. First SWOS (baby SWOS) will most likely be held at the base where your ship is homeported. Once you get your pin you will go to ASWOS over at Newport.

I would imagine that depending on your orders you might be able to get a little bit of time to visit family/settle in during the PCS, but don't count on it. Whatever you do make sure your wife (if you have one) has a general POA, a PCS POA, a finance POA and is on all accounts and/or has a POA for said accounts BEFORE you go to OCS. Trust me, she will need them. Additionally, it will help the whole moving process go faster.
 

cBoehme

Pro Rec SWO July 2012
Thanks so much for the info! I had another question I thought about today. After I receive my SWO pin will I be transfered to another duty station and ship? Or will I stay in the same ship and just move departments? Thanks for your help!
 

BackOrdered

Well-Known Member
Contributor
Thanks so much for the info! I had another question I thought about today. After I receive my SWO pin will I be transfered to another duty station and ship? Or will I stay in the same ship and just move departments? Thanks for your help!

You will complete your orders and transfer to another ship. Whether or not you switch departments in the mean time is up to the CO and XO. If you want to stay, you can "fleet up" and do a second tour on the same ship as a 2nd tour division officer such as the Navigator or DCA.

Also to clarify, you will go to ASWOS after you get OOD underway qual'd, then get your pin after your SWO board.

http://www.public.navy.mil/bupers-n...COMNAVSURFORINST14121BSWOQUALANDAQD022210.pdf
 

AllAmerican75

FUBIJAR
None
Contributor
The process is that around week 5 or 6 of OCS you will do ship selection with your fellow candidates. The day that you graduate from OCS you will check in with the folks at SWOS. I literally loaded up my car and drove over there (they're both in Newport). You will complete 8 weeks of SWOS Division Officers Course and then report to your ship.

As far as family and moving is concerned, you'll be given a set amount of travel time and house-hunting leave. Depending upon your ship's schedule, you may or may not be able to take it. These are all things that you'll need to work out with your sponsor and the ship.

The new/old DivO Course is actually a step-up from what I was given and you should arrive to the fleet pretty well prepared. Best of luck.

BTW, Frigates out of Mayport or Small Deck Amphibs out of Japan are the best duty decisions you can make.
 

SeaHawk2011

FinSel SWO
The process is that around week 5 or 6 of OCS you will do ship selection with your fellow candidates. The day that you graduate from OCS you will check in with the folks at SWOS. I literally loaded up my car and drove over there (they're both in Newport). You will complete 8 weeks of SWOS Division Officers Course and then report to your ship.


So, you spend approx. 20 weeks in Newport before going to your first ship? I've heard it both ways, so just trying to clarify.
 

ASR

Member
There's some fusion of dated, soon to be dated, and sort of current information here. The Surface Warfare Officer Division Officer Course, SWOSDOC, which has at various times been 2 months, 4 months, maybe even 6 months long and existed in Newport... Doesn't exist. Hasn't existed for a decade now. Over that time, the general scheme (and this is the mostly current, but potentially soon to be dated information) was report to a ship (though you may or may not receive a few weeks of schools en route depending on your orders, if you do those schools may or may not be in Newport), spend about a year qualifying OOD, then head to Newport for a 3-week Advanced Shiphandling and Tactics course (SWOS-ASAT), then go back to your ship, qualify SWO, and remain until your orders run out. The current first tour length for a conventional SWO is 30 months (was previously 27) absent exercising he "fleet up" option that tiz84 mentioned where you stay on the same ship for your 2nd tour as well.

But... In addition to all that, for OCS grads they have this thing called OCS SWO Intro, which is in Newport, but is only 3 weeks long and was developed after the disestablishment of the traditional SWOSDOC to help make up for the gap in knowledge between NROTC/USNA grads (who spend 4 years in training programs that, while they produce all flavors of URL officers, are largely SWO-oriented) and OCS grads. That still exists, but...

The SWO community is now establishing a Basic Division Officer Course (BDOC). This course will start in October of this year and will indeed be about 8 weeks. The intent is to get most SWO Ensigns to it prior to reporting to their ship as an intermediate stop (an I-stop) on their orders, but depending on how full classes are, you may actually (and this is the fun part) be ordered to your ship as an I-stop (even though it's the ship you have PCS orders to) then as part of the same orders have an I-stop at BDOC, and THEN you will arrive at your ultimate duty station: the same ship you were just on for up to 5 months as an I-stop. I realize that may seem crazy to you now, but don't worry, that indicates only that you are still sane. But don't worry, we'll take care of that for you: one day, when you've got your SWO pin, it'll all make "perfect sense".

Oh, and by the way, BDOC will be in Norfolk and San Diego, not Newport. Generally speaking, if you are heading to an east coast ship you will go to Norfolk, in to a west coast ship or out to Japan or Hawaii you'll generally go to San Diego for BDOC.

As part of this, you may or may not go to SWOS-ASAT midway through your tour, but that will eventually go away, but it's not going away right away. It may also be the plan to get rid of the OCS SWO Intro course at some point, but I'm not 100% clear on that.

Oh, and to paint as full a picture as possible, for the last 3 or 4 years there's also been a SWO Intro course of about 6 weeks taught in Norfolk and San Diego by the Afloat Training Groups as a sort of an ad hoc gap filler, because it didn't really take us 10 years to realize it was a terrible idea to start sending Ensigns to ships with zero training, it only took us 5 or 6, but it's taken this long to actually do something about it which makes, wait for it… "perfect sense."

And that is a history of SWO intro training over the last 10 years. It's all a rich tapestry... And hopefully explains why you're hearing so many different, at times conflicting reports on what you can expect by way of training.
 

Spekkio

He bowls overhand.
I think this flip flopping is because it's somehow hard for communities outside aviation to realize that our qual pipeline of sending someone to a ship with almost no training and expecting them to absorb a high level of knowledge and be an engaged DIVO makes no sense. But they don't want to take the "risk" of overhauling it or deal with the macromanagement of how it changes manning, so we get half-assed solutions like this every few years.
 

BackOrdered

Well-Known Member
Contributor
Why oh why can't we use the British model? We started this Navy with most of their traditions, why not JO training?
 

Spekkio

He bowls overhand.
It's the "I did it, so can you" and "it's always been that way and it works" mentality paired with "man, I would really be screwed if this went awry" paired with "too many moving parts and not enough funding."

None of them are good reasons, really, but by the time someone reaches a rank where he can actually get all the people moving, he's got much bigger fish to fry.
 

Uncle Fester

Robot Pimp
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
I understand the SWOS model is cyclic, and it sounds like it's slowly circling back around to where it was when I did it in '99 (long course before reporting). Thinking seems to revolve between 'you need experience to get anything from the training' to 'you need training to get anything from your experience'.

Personally, I think it needs to be an intensive course in seamanship, ship handling, tactics and engineering. SWOSDOC wasted a lot of time on stuff that wasn't very useful, or maybe 'nice to know', like signal flags, and not enough time in the simulator.
 

BigRed389

Registered User
None
Why oh why can't we use the British model? We started this Navy with most of their traditions, why not JO training?

Same reason we couldn't possibly implement something like a WTI program.

Well, that and $$$.
 
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